quotes by Theoretical Physicist Quotes

“A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.”

“Given the millions of billions of Earth-like planets, life elsewhere in the Universe without a doubt, does exist. In the vastness of the Universe we are not alone.”

“Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life.”

“It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing...”

“It is always delightful when a great and beautiful idea proves to be consonant with reality.”

“Time is an illusion.”

“Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.”

“The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!”

“There is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the field is the only reality.”

“Albert is a very poor student. He is mentally slow, unsociable and is always daydreaming. He is spoiling it for the rest of the class. It would be in the best interests of all if he were removed from school immediately.”

“Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow - perhaps it all will.”

“Mankind must give up war in the Atomic Era. What is at stake is the life or death of humanity.”

“Stupidity is a personal achievement which transcends national boundaries.”

“Anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group. This is a normal social reaction. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world... the root cause is their use of enemies they create in order to keep solidarity.”

“It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of teaching have not yet entirely strangled that sacred spirit of curiosity and inquiry, for this delicate plant needs freedom no less than stimulation.”

“Man like every other animal is by nature indolent. If nothing spurs him on, then he will hardly think, and will behave from habit like an automaton.”

“The world as we see it is only the world as we see it. Others may see it differently.”

“All that's different about me is that I still ask the questions most people stopped asking at age five.”

“My primary process of perceiving is muscular and visual.”

“How insidious Nature is when one is trying to get at it experimentally.”

“One should never impose one's views on a problem; one should rather study it, and in time a solution will reveal itself.”

“All our thinking is of this nature, a free play with concepts.”

“[When asked "Dr. Einstein, why is it that when the mind of man has stretched so far as to discover the structure of the atom we have been unable to devise the political means to keep the atom from destroying us?"] That is simple, my friend. It is because politics is more difficult than physics.”

“The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.”

“The school has always been the most important means of transferring the wealth of tradition from one generation to the next. This applies today in an even higher degree than in former times, for through modern development of economic life, the family”

“If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.”

“The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.”

“We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.”

“The truth isn't always a blinding light. Sometimes it's a deep and dazzling darkness, that illuminates - and burns - just as surely.”

“Political leaders or governments owe their position partly to force and partly to popular election. They cannot be regarded as representative of best elements, morally or intellectually, in their respective nations.”

“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.This is regarded as probably NOT a quote by Einstein.”

“It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.”

“I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.”

“I have never obtained any ethical values from my scientific work.”

“Whether or not you can observe a thing depends upon the theory you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.”

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. We will not solve the problems of the world from the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. More than anything else, this new century demands new thinking: We must change our materially based analyses of the world around us to include broader, more multidimensional perspectives.”

“A thousand things can prove me right and one can prove me wrong.”

“The best that Gauss has given us was likewise an exclusive production. If he had not created his geometry of surfaces, which served Riemann as a basis, it is scarcely conceivable that anyone else would have discovered it. I do not hesitate to confess that to a certain extent a similar pleasure may be found by absorbing ourselves in questions of pure geometry.”

“All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us.”

“It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.”

“I make it a rule not to clutter my mind with simple information that I can find in a book in five minutes.”

“Never let yourself be seduced by any problem, no matter how difficult.”

“You cannot love a car the way you love a horse. The horse brings out human feelings the way machines cannot do. Things like machines may develop or neglect certain things in people ... Machines make our life impersonal and stultify certain elements in us and create an impersonal environment.”

“A forced faithfulness is a bitter fruit for all concerned.”

“No matter how we may single out a complex from nature...its theoretical treatment will never prove to be ultimately conclusive... I believe that this process of deepening of theory has no limits.”

“Each possession I own is but a stone around my neck.”

“It's very depressing to live in a time where it's easier to break an atom than a prejudice.”

“As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.”

“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second.”

“The future is an unknown, but a somewhat predictable unknown. To look to the future we must first look back upon the past. That is where the seeds of the future were planted. I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”